A year ago they stripped me of my Nicaraguan nationality

A year ago I was in Miami interviewing some priests who, a week before, had been exiled by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

The religious were part of the 222 political prisoners who were taken from the prisons at dawn and put on a plane chartered by the Joe Biden Administration bound for Dulles, Washington.

The whole operation, it seemed to me at that moment, was worthy of a film production, unusual, crazy, absurd... While I was reporting, in the middle of an interview with the priests, a colleague and friend, María Lily Delgado, startled me interrupted.

She yelled at me: “They are removing more nationalities.”

As if it had not been enough to banish the political prisoners, in another act of endless political revenge, the regime stripped them of their Nicaraguan nationality, declared them “traitors to the country”, fugitives from justice and confiscated their assets.

That is, civil death.

That same repressive cocktail was applied to 94 more Nicaraguans on February 15, 2023. The majority of those newly denationalized were opponents, activists, religious people and journalists who had already been exiled since 2018. The retaliation was clear: the perpetual cancellation of our rights citizens.

Another attack for not keeping quiet and denouncing the excesses of the regime.

I apologized to the priests for the interruption, closed the notebook, turned off the recorder and started watching the broadcast on María Lily's phone in which an Ortega judge read the names of those stripped of their nationality.

At that moment – ​​with the adrenaline rush that reporters feel with breaking news – I didn't think I was going to be named.

But there he was on the list, number 78 of the accused.

I am very aware that I only felt anger when I heard the judge pronounce my name.

An uncontrollable rage that, when I left the priests, turned me to the keyboard to protest with the only tool I have: the word.

I did not realize the consequences of denationalization until later I realized that if I was no longer a national, my passport should no longer work.

Would I be stranded in Miami?

I began asking diplomatic and immigration sources about what to do if my passport was deactivated.

No one was able to tell me something clear, certain.

The thing about denationalization, they agreed, was not only something incredible and really unusual, but it was a kind of punishment taken from the Middle Ages.

There were no explanations for this situation.

I managed to travel and little by little I began to understand what the issue of being stateless was about.

They looked for me in the civil registry of my town and it no longer existed.

My birth certificate was exterminated.

It has happened to several denationalized people: their children suddenly, legally, stopped having parents because they no longer exist according to the regime.

Furthermore, the bank accounts were frozen and above all, the most complicated thing for me is that uneasiness in my chest: the dictators hit where it hurts most, in my essence as a person who is made up of a good part of my proud

Nicaraguanness

.

I felt defeated again those days, just like how I felt when I had to go into exile for the second time.

Since then I have dealt with that unease that has been diminishing as the months have passed, because if I have learned anything in all this time away from my Nicaragua, it is to be more resistant and more stubborn every day so as not to give up.

I cling to what Ghandi said in a trial against him for sedition: “Disobedience to evil is as much a duty as obedience to good.”

And journalism is disobedient to the satraps.

I believe in that.

But I would be lying if I told you it was easy.

Exile and banishment exact very expensive bills, regardless of legal and logistical issues.

It was a huge incentive that Spain made us national almost expeditiously.

A very generous gesture and political will from a country that our poet Rubén Darío, providentially, taught us to call “motherland.”

However, the emotional setbacks have continued to come.

Maintaining the determination to continue doing journalism that monitors and denounces a regime that has been accused of committing crimes against humanity makes one a kind of stinker.

Friendships move away or continue clandestinely, as a way of marking distance and protecting themselves from the repression that has shown that it has no limits.

The last straw is that if someone visits me, they don't even publish a photo with me for “protection.”

The family does the same and with special gravity one loses family members, because one is alone in exile and banishment.

It hurts to lose that connection with the people you love and, far from being a reproach to them, I am convinced that it is what should be done.

What it touches

On the other hand, there are people who were vital to resisting in exile but who get fed up with this story that seems to never end and abandon us, to go to other areas where the daily effort of wanting to rescue Nicaragua is not the norm, far from the exile.

Over the last year I have questioned myself a lot personally;

It has seemed inevitable to me, although I know that this exile is not my fault, nor for what I do.

For example, why do I continue doing journalism?

Seriously, why continue doing journalism when they take almost everything away from you?

They take away your country, your family, your friends and even the possibility of not being able to bury my grandparents;

when they freeze your accounts, declare you a fugitive from justice, defame you, attack you, persecute your parents... Why?

I have not found a thoughtful or very profound answer, but I have found something similar to a cliché answer that is honest to me: I have a commitment as a citizen of Nicaragua, but above all a commitment to the craft of journalism.

In that sense, every day I try to reinvent myself in exile.

I have formed another beautiful and large family with other exiles and exiles in Costa Rica, where I live, and we continue to believe that it is worth enduring.

The common hope is badly battered, but remains unscathed and always offers the promise of a Nicaragua free to return.

One of those friends and now my family in exile lent me a couple of months ago the book by Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, titled

How to Fight a Dictator.

I was struck by the question that Ressa poses at the outset on the book's cover: “What are you willing to sacrifice for your future?”

I believe that all of us exiles and exiles have already sacrificed the things that I have told you, but we will also continue to sacrifice, because we are facing an opprobrious dictatorship that does not cease in its desire to break our dignity, and that is why it always finds devious ways to attack us, to try to silence us.

I say this because the last tactic of the Ortega-Murillo family is to go against the relatives of the banished and exiled.

First they started with arrests and then, a couple of weeks ago, they began to confiscate the properties of the relatives of those declared “traitors to the country.”

It is a legal aberration and plunder that has no shame.

Even if it is a political crime, the crimes never transcend those responsible.

There is a strong climate of self-censorship.

Terror reigns both in Nicaragua and outside its borders.

The exiles and exiles are bitten by the dilemma between continuing to denounce or remaining silent so that they do not harm their families.

It is a decision that each one must assume to the extent of his own vicissitudes.

It is not an unfounded fear and it must be taken seriously, because there is a certainty that the Ortega-Murillos have decided not to respect anything;

They cross all the red lines that, at least for decorum, should not be crossed.

The presidential couple have given themselves license to be abject and heartless, something they more than demonstrated when they ordered the fatal shooting of 355 souls during the 2018 protests. The Ortega-Murillos cannot – nor will they be able to in the face of history – avoid any of their crimes, as well as the illegal confiscation of properties strictly prohibited by the Political Constitution of Nicaragua in its article 44. All the violence they exert carries a central element of arbitrariness and revenge.

It's time to resist with strong conviction.

In this uncertainty, and in the face of these attacks suffered, one has to find meaning in life to be calm with ourselves and be able to move forward.

And the meaning of life, Maria Ressa says in her book, “is not something that one stumbles upon or something that someone gives us.

We build it through each and every decision we make, the commitments we choose, the people we love and the values ​​that are important to us.”

In my case it is important to continue fighting, as I said before, with the only tool I have: the word.

It is a constant, dichotomous battle, in which some days the commitment feels worn out and other days rejuvenated.

Several fronts open up for us on an emotional, economic and professional level that we must challenge and resolve.

As Sabina sings, it is bitter like the exile's wine, but also hopeful when we are comforted by the collective embrace that we exiled and exiled give each other.

We survive clinging to that plank that floats in the sea of ​​totalitarianism so as not to sink, so as not to drown and continue for Nicaragua and the Nicas.

With that rare hope that does not abandon us in the face of such a soulless panorama.

Wilfredo Miranda

is editorial coordinator and editor of

Divergents

and collaborator of EL PAÍS from Costa Rica. 

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